Slave Labor in the Capital: Building Washington's Iconic Federal Landmarks by Bob Arnebeck

Author:Bob Arnebeck [Arnebeck, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2014-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

Commissioner William Thornton suggested training slave stonecutters but didn’t press the issue and quickly adjusted to southern views of slavery. From the Architect of the Capitol.

The priority was to get work resumed on the Capitol. The commissioners had already backed off from finishing the Rotunda. Now they decided to stop work on the South Wing. They would finish the Senate Chamber in the North Wing and prepare a room above it where the House of Representatives could meet.

However, as designer of the Capitol, Commissioner Thornton thought hard on that. As McDermott Roe’s complaints before the walls collapsed made clear, the limiting factor in the stone setting was the stonecutting. The stonecutters also received higher wages than any other workers. So a few weeks after the walls collapsed, Thornton wrote to his fellow commissioners suggesting that slaves were the solution to both the lack of and expense of stonecutters.

He suggested they “hire 50 intelligent negroes for six years,” or better yet buy them, “as no interference of the owners could then take place.” Two or three stonecutters paid over two times the going wage would train them. He warned that “if a measure of this kind be not pursued it is doubtful whether the building can be ready in the time required.” The slaves could have their liberty “at the expiration of 5 or 6 years.”

His fellow commissioners did not react. To buy fifty slaves could have cost $25,000, which would have swallowed up almost half their annual budget. Thornton’s proposal would have likely demoralized the free workers they already had. The strife between Irish and Scottish workers was bad enough. When he made the proposal, he had only lived in the southern United States for less than a year. He quickly realized his idea was impossible. From his position of power, Thornton never proposed anything else for the benefit of slaves.

But Thornton’s idea raises a question. Slaves cutting trees or hauling stones were doing familiar work. Did the slaves tending masons learn anything about setting stone? There is no evidence that the commissioners gave a thought to any of the slaves tending masons as individuals, and none were singled out and given more responsibility except when the commissioners had a hunch that strength and not skill was the key to getting a job done more cheaply.

As we shall see in the next chapter, slave laborers were given a chance to earn money for themselves if they sawed lumber. Evidently taking a hint from that, the commissioners tried to get slaves to saw stone. Thinner facing stones were cut to size with a large saw. It was slow and clumsy work, requiring the use of water to cool the thick blade. Paying stonecutters to do it was expensive

The commissioners first sent to Charleston, where there was reportedly a working stone-sawing machine. With one horse, one man could work four saws. In October 1796, a contractor tried to get it to work, but some brass fittings were wrong, and no one really knew how to run it.

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